Game Conferences and Meet Up With Me

SUMMARY: I’ll be at Casuality, Gnomedex, and Gamefest this Summer. If you want to meet me in person, see below. As I was writing this article, I decided to try out Google’s cool calendar publishing system. Check out Upcoming Events for Jeff Tunnell.

6/27- 6/29/06 CasualitySeattle, WA, USA. If you read my article about whether or not investing in game conferences is worth the money, you may wonder why I am attending these events. Part of the answer is “do as I suggest, not as I do“, but the main reason is that I have some specific meetings already set up that will pay for the conference. Conferences can be worth the money, but if you are a struggling Indie that does not yet have a game on the market, you just need to look at the wisdom of spending scarce cash on anything but finishing your game.

If you are an Indie, attending a smaller conference such as Casuality will get you a much better return on investment than GDC or E3. Imagine everybody in the casual games business in one room. Need the distribution guys? They are standing at the bar. Need to talk to one of the budding publishers that actually pay money to get game completed? There they are! If you need help getting started on the schmooze-fest, make sure to check out the pointers that I delineated in my GDC article.

6/29/06-7/1/06 Gnomedex Seattle, WA, USA. I won’t even have to change hotel rooms for this one. Gnomedex does not really have a lot to do with game development, but it does bring a bunch of geeks into the same room allowing anything to happen. Most of the A-list bloggers will be there, so maybe I can pick up some tips on how to make my blog better.

8/14-8/15/06 GameFestSeattle, WA, USA. Microsoft’s game making event. Josh Williams (GarageGames, CTO) and I will be on a panel about making smaller, downloadable games. More info as it becomes available.

This is my current calendar. If you want to meet me at any of these events, please send me email at jefft at garagegames dot com.